Print Edition: March 13, 2013
The Men
New Moon
Their early work garnered them a reputation of a band that didn’t really fit into any neat category, playing fast and loose guitar-driven rock on both their brash debut Immaculada and sophomore follow-up Leave Home, not unlike 1980s hardcore pioneers Hüsker Dü. However, last year’s Open Your Heart was a revelation for the band, as they incorporated their abrasive production with pleasing melodies, culminating in a sound that The Men further hash out on New Moon. Recorded over two weeks in a Catskills cabin in upstate New York, The Men’s abrupt change in attitude, tempo and genre may be disconcerting to some of their purposefully-naive longtime fans, but it’s a move that the band has been telegraphing since the inclusion of the confessional “Candy” on their previous effort. Standout tracks on the album include the garage-rock infused “The Seeds,” the organ heavy and gut-warming “Bird Song” and the rootsy, but fuzzy “Half Angel Half Light,” which ends with “la la” backing vocals reminiscent of America’s “A Horse With No Name.” With so many promising paths to take, The Men’s three lead singers cover a lot of ground on New Moon in an equally satisfying and mature way.
Mise en Scene
Desire’s Despair
Mise en Scene—Manitoban duo Stefanie Biondal Johnson and Jodi Dunlop—released their first full-length album and carved out a place in my heart. It’s beach surf and road-trip rock that flows from nostalgia to carefree whimsicality about love in the summer, melancholy and accepting the self. There’s a ‘60s girl-band vibe with all the gentle and all the rawness a feminine voice can give – Johnson’s voice is dreamy but full-bodied and often with a bad-girl vibe, and her lyrics are unashamed. “Endless Summer,” “Desire,” and “Hey Velvet” are all notable tracks – the track that I flip to first is always going to be “Paris, Texas,” where the roughness of life is channelled through capturing the emotion of escapism: “They loved each other to a violent end / the border of abuse would move and bend / control imposed, jealousy, pretend / … Find me, get me out of Paris …” It’s a smooth listen from start to finish—the drums won’t slow down for long—and each track’s got the great guitar tone and vocals that you won’t forget.
Waxahatchee
Cerulean Salt
There probably wasn’t a more emotionally devastating album last year than American Weekend, lo-fi echo-voice guitar-melancholy from Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield) that began “Crave desolate” and never let up, a half hour of held breath, empty nights and the regret that fills in gaps of hesitation and action alike. Things sound a little different on Cerulean Salt, sonically (cleaner production) and in some ways dramatically (Crutchfield’s characters don’t all seem to stumble the same way). Words hang like clouds, but suspended between are breaks of broken melody. Many of the tracks here don’t go much longer than two minutes, but in the pauses, the interruptions, the way the scenes, even if negative, are alive with detail and syndetons of attempted connection, the narratives of AW aren’t repeated, instead Cerulean Salt is all moment. “I cannot see into the future,” Crutchfield sings, and to the end any futures are qualified by the past, all flux with description and doubt. Some of those moments enter electric, louder and more abrasive, but ultimately as full of self-mistrust as the rest – the circle does not become complete until “Swan Dive,” where drums palpitate as Crutchfield moves through spaces of pain, separating the past, vocalizing its worst permanence.
Stornoway
Tales from Terra Firma
With the release of their freshman album, Tales from Terra Firma, Stornoway really seems to be set on evolving. Although, going into this I really wasn’t expecting them to have ventured away from the simple indie sound they initially set out with. Listening to the first two tracks made me begin to question this album, where they fused a few other genres and expanded their musical repertoire. So it’s not that there was anything wrong with the songs, just different than what I know of Stornoway. However, when “The Bigger Picture” comes on it’s recognizable through their familiar meaningful and melancholic lyrics. It’s really by the time “(A Belated) Invite to Eternity” hits that I began to fall into the album. Given that they did an outstanding job at creating that easy indie sound, albeit with their unique English flare on their debut, having created an atmosphere of a few guys hanging out, maybe at Dude Chilling Park, and just letting their acoustic guitar rip, it’s with Tales From Terra Firma that I’m left feeling a lot more satisfied. The greater use of instruments, injection of some genres, and my favourite two tracks at the end, “The Great Procrastinator” and “The Ones We Hurt The Most” make this an outstanding listen from beginning to end.
